Investing Concepts!

Short Sale: I had trouble understanding what a short sale was but I found a great definition that helped me understand very well. What I understand a short sale to be is when an investor sees a stock that they believe is overpriced and looks to drop in the near future. The investor borrows said stock from someone who owns it already. They promise to return it at a later date and also generally there is a fee that comes along with borrowing the stock. After they have borrowed it the investor then sells the stock. They buy it back at a later date usually within a few hours after the stock has dropped. The profit is collected by the investor. The profit comes from selling the stock at a higher price than they buy it back for. It is then returned and you have made money hopefully!

Market Timing: I read about this in Money Sense magazine. It made me wonder what it would be like if you were to miss out on the really big days in the stock market. I found a cool little blurb on this on the site http://www.mathisen.ca/fyi.htm Basically it says that if you were invested in the S&P 500 over the past 16 years straight your return would be 14.51%. If you try to time your investing and missed 40 of the best days (which is only 1% of the total amount of days investing) your return would be around 5.63%. What I am gathering from this article is that you can never really predict whats going to happen, but we can make educated choices and guesses as to what may happen.

Hedge Funds: I also read about hedge funds in a magazine the other day, and wondered how I might get into one. It has been coined as the "mutual fund for the ultra rich" I thought to myself hmmm that would be nice. I dug a little bit deeper, and found out that hedging actually means to try and reduce risk. Hedge funds; however, try to maximize the return on the fund. They require very large initial investments, and are not very liquid as you have to keep the money in the fund for a year or more. Hedge funds are not regulated by the government, as to be involved in a hedge fund the investor usually has a good knowledge of investing.
Hopefully one day I can get into a hedge fund! Might be fun!

WEEK 4

NETFLIX! Holding onto Netflix has paid off in great amounts. The after market trading on the 20th has helped our stock go from being down -$2400.00 up to $1200.00, and it is continuing to rise. Attached is a great article about how Netflix has turned around in the past couple of months and become a streaming video company that mails out dvd's. (they used to be a mail out dvd company that streamed a little bit)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/netflix-eyes-streaming-service/article1766655/

Precision Drilling hit a 52-week low at the start of October, and we got in right before it started to climb again. This company has had phenomenal growth in the past week. Their main line is oilfield drilling specializing in safety. There is always a great need for safety in the oilfield. The stock dropped after James Cameron's visit to Norther Alberta, but I have a feeling that the new ways of drilling and the safety that Precision takes has had a good impact on the company!

We also invested in Precisions stock up north here on the Canadian side, which has also seen amazing growth.

Jaguar mining and Madison Minerals INC. have done terribly for us. They have only been dropping and have made it hard for us to recover from this slump we have been in. I do believe however that these companies have just had a short week, as their stock have been jumping by huge amounts in the past year. Continuing to hold on them will be our best bet!

WEEK 3

Week 3 was a slow week.We had originally bought into the Canadian giant LuLu Lemon, but it kept dropping netting us a loss of about $1800.00. We did however go back to the company on the American side of things. It's stock in the US seems to only rise. I think that we can factor in the many stores that have been opening in the States. Most notably in the hot yoga markets and healthy living areas of Maui, and southern California. I believe that these are great locations for a Company who's main focus is healthy living and looking good while you work out. As the saying goes "look good, feel good; feel good, play good; play good and get PAID!"
Hopefully our stock will rise and we can get back up into the top 10 with LuLu.

Net flix has been dismal for us and continues to drop. I think that it is only a matter of time until the web based company blows up in the Canadian market. Advertising has been amped up and the word is getting out there about how you no longer have to drive to the video store. Lets see what happens when the inventory hits 5th gear and starts to rocket this company into a new dimension.

Budweiser is still a great bet, and should continue to grow. Maybe we might even see Cliff Lee and the The Rangers win the World Series!
http://espn.go.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/10004/alcs-game-5-preview-rangers-at-yankees

WEEK 2

After the second week we are sitting at number 5 on the US side and on the Canadian side we have dropped down dramatically to the 24^th spot.
On the Canadian side we bought stocks from The Bank of Nova Scotia. We chose this stock because Scotiabank is the fundraiser for the cure of breast cancer. As of right now we are losing money but it looks like the prices will increase soon.